


Shards of Time

by Linorien



Category: James Bond (Classic movies), James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 05:47:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 2,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15550974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linorien/pseuds/Linorien
Summary: Each chapter is a different historical AU to fill the prompt table for 007 fest.





	1. 1920s AU

It was hard after the war. James left when he was young, too young, and he came back older than time. He feels like he stole the years from the soldiers who died.

Q was too young for the war. But he helped his grandfather out in his workshop. He helped design new guns, better grenades. His weapons were the most reliable in the trenches.

Eve lived in the moment. She shared a flat with a group of girls and they went to all the flapper clubs three times a week. She waited tables the other nights. She didn’t mind the work so long as she got tips and great music and didn’t have to remember her brother who never came home. 

Mallory was a captain in the war. He never really left the army. He had a family, but not anymore. The military needed him more than they did. He had never been a good father anyhow. He let them think he was dead. It would spare them the constant wondering anyways. 

Tanner worked radio lines in the war. it was familiar. He had worked at the BBC for a decade already producing radio dramas. The coded messages felt like a familiar spy drama. Only with far greater consequences.


	2. In Kue's Name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Medieval AU  
> For the anon prompt god!Q/knight!Bond

“By Kue’s beard would you just die already!” he yelled as he swung his sword at the kelpie.

“With the power given to me by Kue and the crown, I hereby banish thee from this realm,” he declared as he sent the unseelie prince back to whence it came.

“Kue’s bollocks,” he swore when he nicked his fingers on a splintered lance.

“I swear by Kue’s holy head that you will pay for what you have said here today,” he spat at the traitorous lord in the Queen’s court.

“Kue’s swollen left testicle that hurts like the dagger of Kue himself has pierced me,” he said as he fell on the battlefield.

The world grew dark, and then oddly light again. A figure of light stood before him. Bond pushed himself to a vaguely upright position and squinted. He thought it could make out wavy obsidian hair and a sparkle, even brighter than the glow of the being’s body, near where he guessed the eyes would be.

“Am I dead?” he asked since there seemed no other option.

 _What is death but a pause button?_ An echoing voice replied.  _You amuse me. Though I do not know what fascination you seem to have with my body parts. I look forward hearing some praises fall from your lips in the future._

Sir Bond awoke and found himself in his bed. Lifting up his tunic, he found no sign of the spear’s wound. “Praise be to Kue. And bless his sparkling eyes.”


	3. 1990s AU

The computers weren’t advanced enough when Q was young to get into hacking. But his hands were never still. He designed far beyond what technology could do. Hi ideas were not constrained by reality. 

It wasn’t a surprise then when he found himself working in computer graphics. The perfect mix of coding genius with an imaginative mind. He followed the job and landed in Hollywood, the pale Brit among the suntanned Californians. 

He worked on many films before being approached to help with a perfect one. Tanner brought him in to help with the technical aspects of the film and convinced him to stay for the CG. Q was reluctant to work on a film not yet green-lit, until he read the script. Then he threw himself into it entirely. The film? 

The Matrix.


	4. A Most Unusual Muse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt Moneypenny/Octopussy; bonus points if Octopussy is like, an octopus selkie or octo-maid or something and Rennaisance AU

Eve sat on the rocks by the shore, the waves crashing beneath her. The wind blew her curls past her eyes as she sighed. 

Can you call yourself an artist if you don’t produce any art? Already she was breaking conventions. A woman artist. It was scandalous in this day and age. Where she a man she need only create one great masterpiece and her name would be sought after. 

It would be better also were she in Italy. Here the rich only wanted miniatures. But Eve wanted large paintings. Great works of art that would adorn halls. 

Yet even if she were a man from warmer shores than these, she would still be sat here with a blank canvas and dry brushes. 

A sharp wind blew across her face. She furiously brushed back her hair, wishing she had brought a tie. She blinked and beheld a woman in the water.Eve scrambled down the rocks and came closer. “Hello?” she greeted, yet the woman stayed mute.  

Eve gazed upon her long dark hair, wet and wild, her cheeks carved deep into her face, guiding the eye downward along the short neck to the collar bone whereupon Eve was surprised to find gills. Hesitantly she reached out to touch them lightly, verifying that she was not dreaming. The skin was slimy, like wet paint upon a smooth canvas. Eve’s eyes traveled further down and saw not legs but a body that split into many tentacles, dark purple and black, hiding beneath the breaking waves. She felt a wet hand lift her chin. 

She could not explain it, but when the creature’s lips curled up in a smile, not even the pointed teeth stopped her own facial muscles from doing the same. 

She had found her muse. 


	5. Gladiatorial era

Kyu is an engineer. He engineers the many marvels of the Colosseum, determining ways that animals would be released into arena yet also remain water tight so that Nero could watch sea battles as well.

James leads a small crew of men on one of these boats in the mock battles. He had fought in a real one before. It is nothing like this. But it’s the best way to feel alive.

Billius is an actor. He was captured and only his great voice saved him from portraying the doomed figured of mythology. He could play the hero, until the crowd turned. 

Maximilian Denbigh was not so lucky. He had been charged as a criminal and was doomed to portray Icarus. Wings were strapped to his arms and he was taught the lines at spearpoint. He would go out in a spectacle. The drama would conclude with his body catapulted across the arena and dashed on the ground, dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one came about while watching a documentary.


	6. An Important Transmission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1960s AU. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this way sooner.

“I can’t believe you, I hate you!” Q slapped Bond as soon as he met him at the airport.

“What is it this time, Q? The mission was a success,” Bond refuted. “I even brought back your gun.”

“Not in public, Bond!” Q snatched the gun out of the agent’s hand and hurriedly stuffed it out of sight.

“I don’t understand. Successful mission, no political messes, no explosions, I even brought back a prisoner. Alive. So why do you hate me?”

“I had to monitor you. All night. No time to watch anything else.” He drew out the end of his sentence like it was a clue, like Bond was meant to remember something special about last night.

“It wasn’t your birthday, was it?” he guessed.

Q groaned, seemingly at a total loss for words, until he yelled in Bond’s face, “You made me miss the moon landing!”


	7. The Great Rail Mystery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1840s AU

Bond had been hired to protect a minor lord delivering what he was told was a major piece of information to Parliament. They were taking the new railway down from Bristol to London as far as the line went. It might be trickier protecting him in the city, but Bond would tackle that problem when he got to it. 

But the train was the easy bit. Bond pushed past the boy with a strange box and installed Lord Lockey in his compartment and told him to only open the door if someone knocked five times. So long as he didn’t leave, Bond could sample the bar before dinner. There were advantages to being sponsored by those with money.

At dinnertime, Bond knocked on the compartment door five times. There was no response. He knocked again and pressed his ear to the door. Not even a rustle or a snore. He hurried toward the front of the car and got a conductor to unlock the compartment. Lord Lockey was dead. The files were gone. 

“Is something the matter?” Bond turned to find the boy standing next to him. 

“What does it look like?” he replied brusquely. 

“It looks like a mystery.” He pushed past Bond and began looking around the room, holding up his box again. 

“What’re doing? This is none of your business.”

The boy straightened up and help out a hand. “My name is Q. Consulting detective. Pleasure to be of service.”

Bond didn’t really have a say as this crazy individual started poking around the compartment and began making deductions about the murder method and how the murderer got out while leaving the door unlocked. He even said he could possibly identify the murderer from the pictures he took on his picture box. Bond couldn’t say if he was right, but he found himself accepting the boy’s offer to accompany him to London and chase down the files. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somewhere along the way, Q became a little bit like Angus from TAZ


	8. Stone Age AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Little bit more like headcanona

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Co-written with Azure

  * Q is awful at hunting. And that’s fine. He is valued for his smarts. One of the things he creates is new pigments for paint. This is used both for clothes and for painting the walls of their cave.
  * Bond gets his knack for hunting  _after_ discovering that he rather likes sharp things (because sharp things are useful). It takes a while, but eventually, he sort of realizes that searching for sharp objects all the time once the older ones grow blunt is time consuming. And it takes  _another_ while for him to figure out that he can sharpen his clutter of random rocks and bones to finer points than anything he can find out in nature.  _This_ is when he starts to become really good at hunting (or, at least, he can deliver more damage than previously now.)
  * Em is an elder of the tribe. She rules with a long walking (or whacking) stick always in her grasp. She is small but fierce, her sharp teeth easily tearing the meat the hunters brought back. Despite her age and gender, she is in charge of the hunters and often advises them when the water will fall from the sky and they should stay home or when the hunting is good. It’s uncanny, but she always seems to know which watering hole the largest animals will be at.
  * Eve is the occasional trouble-maker (not that Em approves, but at least she’s not half as bad as Bond) because she doesn’t like to conform and has no intention to do so any time in the future. Sometimes, she’s with Q, watching and sometimes helping him with the pigment finding and mixing. Other times, she’ll help out wherever she can—picking food and gather and  _hunting_. It’s the hunting that used to get her into trouble, but after one particularly vicious fight with some foolish male (which she didn’t start, mind) and her subsequent victory, they don’t tend to bother her anymore.
  * Boothroyd was injured when he was a younger hunter. He walks with a limp. But like Q, he is good at improvising things so he has a crutch that helps him walk without as much pain. He spends a lot of his time carefully sharpening tools, the methodical  _shick_ ,  _shick_ of the stone providing a backdrop to the stories he tells the kids. Q helps him by making shadows with his hands on the cave walls to help tell the stories.
  * Tanner mostly doesn’t like hunting. He  _can_ do it, and he’s methodical enough that he can achieve his objective well, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he likes doing it. What he likes is to just help Em out with organizing hunting parties (who gets to be on it, and who needs more rest), gathering parties (where they should be picking fruits up next), and how best to migrate to a better location once the surrounding areas have stopped providing them with sufficient materials. Q, Eve, and he work well together because he appreciates Eve’s mischief, Q’s creativity, and their sense of humor combined. (Bond thinks he’s not really part of the group, but Tanner knows better, considering that Bond is, more likely than not, around whenever he’s home resting after a hunt.)
  * Generally, their tribe gets along well, and other tribes leave them alone. But there is always one dissenter. Silva has always bickered with everyone, and finally he goes and joins the Janus tribe instead. The one tribe that hunts them. But Em reminds everyone that they were better and fear would not destroy them.
  * Bond, to his credit, keeps calm and doesn’t give into the tension and cause trouble (Em and Tanner keeping a close eye on him may or may not have helped matters), but worse comes to worst when his hunting party is attacked one day, and Ronson (one of the younger tribesmen who has started out just a while back) is badly injured. They manage to ward off the enemies, but by the time they bring Ronson back to the tribe for some help (any help), it’s already too late. It’s only now that the idea for revenge really takes root and grips itself around Bond’s mind.




	9. The Great Exhibition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victorian era AU

Q was beyond excited to go. He had been reading all the news and following the construction of the palace with great interest. So on May 1st, 1851, he dragged James along to Hyde Park. 

James was actually a bit excited too. It was an exhibition of the world, and despite his large inheritance, he did not have the time to travel everywhere. Now all the world would be brought to him.

Q spent ages admiring the trophy telescope. The mount alone was worthy of an exhibit. It would make tracking planets across the sky much easier. James left him talking to the manufacturer while he wandered across the hall to look at  Samuel Colt’s booth. Here was demonstrated his prototype for the 1851 Colt Navy and also his older Walker and Dragoon revolvers.

It was here that he found Alec. His Russian accent was thick, but James knows enough that they start talking. They find Q again at the locks exhibit. Alfred Charles Hobbs was demonstrating the inadequacy of several respected locks of the day.

A total coincidence, but these three minds come together and they click. They continued meeting up while the exhibition continued. They didn’t go inside everyday, sometimes they just met for picnics and strolls around the park. One thing was certain, the exhibition might end, but this friendship would not. 


End file.
